Editorial: Brandon Johnson’s Bears stadium flub tells us much about his economic philosophy

Mayor Brandon Johnson, left, and Bears Chairman George McCaskey listen as the team announces a plan to build a lakefront domed stadium on April 24, 2024. Mayor Brandon Johnson sure thinks so, at least as it pertains to the Chicago Bears’ proposal for a domed stadium on the city’s lakefront.

So given that Chicago taxpayer rejection, it surely was appealing to Johnson that one of the benefits of the Bears’ proposal was the dearth of city tax subsidies — at least direct ones — needed to make it happen. The city would “get the money” not from its own taxpayers but from bonds floated by a state agency. Likewise, Chicago government tills wouldn’t furnish the $1.2 billion needed for those playing fields and other amenities depicted in the beautiful renderings.

The political fumbles we’ve seen in the stadium rollout aren’t even what’s most disappointing to us. The revelation, unsurprising as it is, of a mayor who thinks a thriving city economy relies on the public sector — or in this case a public-private partnership, to put it euphemistically — to make multibillion-dollar investments in return for a few thousand permanent jobs puts on display a lack of understanding of what generates genuinely productive business activity.

That exception, and the mayor deserves praise for it, is an effort to cut city-government red tape for housing developers. Chicago’s permitting system is byzantine, and streamlining it is a worthy goal. Other mayors have tried it and largely failed. We’re rooting for Johnson to succeed where they didn’t.

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